Social media sites Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — nerdy novelties the last time Torontonians chose a mayor and council — are now prime campaigning ground and home to most of the action early in the marathon race.

Sarah Thomson used the tools to quickly find 50 youthful volunteers, more people have seen Rocco Rossi’s Empire Club speech online than in person; and every nugget of election news is weighed, dissected and debated by the twitterverse.

The word-spreading tools can have a sharp end. Witness the documentary footage, getting a second life on YouTube, of current mayoral candidates Giorgio Mammoliti and Rob Ford giddily accusing a journalist of calling Ford a “fat f----” and chasing him down a council chamber hallway.

“Any campaign that ignores social media is ignoring a segment of the population that is younger, more active, and politically engaged,” said Sachin Aggarwal, campaign manager for Rossi, a former vice president of early strategic planning and new media for the Star.

A survey of the web presence of various Toronto mayoral candidates suggests Rossi has the most going on, with an interconnected, frequently updated campaign website with blog, multiple Facebook pages, Twitter feed and YouTube channel.

Sarah Thomson, publisher of the Women’s Post, is hot on new media. She’s using those tools plus Foursquare, which tells her fans where she is geographically almost all the time. Rob Ford’s camp has also embraced the chance to extend his grassroots reach.

Smitherman’s campaign website contains almost no information. The lone multimedia feature is a YouTube video that has mid-conversation edits and 21 seconds of the newly registered candidate mutely lacing his skates.

“We’re so early in this campaign we’re just getting started,” said Stefan Baranski, spokesman for Smitherman’s campaign, which is drawing on the expertise of some of Ontario’s top political communicators and strategists.

“Social media is an important tool and we all agree it’s hugely important, but it is just a tool and not the be-all and end-all. Shortly, we’ll have a full campaign website with a social media component that has not been done before in a Toronto mayoral context.”

Baranski said it will include a free-wheeling forum of “not just George supporters.”

Brett Bell, a social media consultant for campaigns and operator of the aggregator website Toronto Election News, says the different tools have different virtues.

Facebook is “where the fish are,” he says, with high penetration among Toronto voters and a chance for candidates to meet them on their home turf. A big presence there, with candidates’ “fans” getting updates seen by them and their non-fan friends, is “essential” in this campaign, he said.

Twitter has a much smaller penetration but the people there tend to be influential, including reporters and behind-the-scenes media workers.

YouTube is a primary way to get the message out, an important search engine and a way for candidates to let voters see them as regular people, he said. “A video is worth 100,000 words in terms of giving people a chance to know you,” Bell says.

For use of social media, so far, he ranks the mayoral candidates, from best to worst, Rossi (“he clearly believes in this stuff”), Ford (“give him his due, he and his team are fully engaged), Thomson (“the most open”), Smitherman (“there is a lot more to come from him”), and a tie for Pantalone (“I don’t know if he is comfortable with social media, but either way it’s okay if the uses are authentic”) and Mammoliti (“He’s the one who probably needs (social media) the most, he’s in danger of being a fringe candidate”).

The BlackBerry-wielding Thomson, who like Rossi is building a public profile from scratch, said online was always top-of-mind.

“We got 50 volunteers because of that website and the stuff we’re doing online, and they’re all kids,” she said, accusing some of her competitors of using social media only to “sell, sell, sell” and not spark debate.

“The power of these things is to get people engaged, with sites like Meetup.com and Foursquare. On the weekend I told people I was on the Toronto Island ferry and some people came up to me and said, ‘You’re Sarah Thomson. You’re on Foursquare.’”

But nobody has as loyal a following online as Ford, with comment-posting supporters swarming like yellowjackets to virtually any mention of him.

As for the profane YouTube video — an excerpt from Min Sook Lee’s documentary Hogtown: the Politics of Policing showing a 2004 confrontation in which Ford and Mammoliti hound The Globe and Mail’s John Barber — Doug Ford shrugs.

“Rob is evolving day by day” and getting top-notch media training, he says. “Everyone’s waiting for Rob to go over the ropes — he’s not going to do it.”

John Laschinger, a high-profile campaign manager who recently joined Pantalone’s campaign, said the veteran politician’s web tools are all being upgraded.

“It will be an important part of the debate, but it doesn’t replace door to door (campaigning), it complements it . . . you have to motivate people to get off their computer and go to the ballot box.”

Dan Leggieri, media relations manager for the Mammoliti campaign, said he’s using social media to help set the record straight.

Mammoliti is “not leading the pack now and isn’t the media’s favourite. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are a way to get the candidate’s real words out there.”

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